The Ford government is officially shutting down a freedom of information request to access government calls on the premier’s personal cellphone records, formalizing a transparency clampdown it announced in March.
Before politicians returned to Queen’s Park for the spring session, the government announced it would tighten Ontario’s transparency laws to offer near-blanket exemptions for the premier, ministers and all of their political staff.
The changes, which were brought in as part of the 2026 budget, were applied retroactively and meant that two court orders for Premier Doug Ford to release government calls on his personal device were effectively moot.
Earlier this year, a panel of three Ontario judges sided with Global News and upheld a ruling from the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) ordering Ford to disclose the government-related calls he makes from his personal device.
Then the appeal court dismissed the government’s request to overturn the decision, which came as part of a years-long transparency battle centring on a week of call logs on the premier’s personal phone from the week the government decided to allow development on protected lands in the Greenbelt.
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The appeal court decision briefly put an order back into effect, telling civil servants to begin work to obtain the premier’s cellphone records.
That was until the government issued a new decision, claiming the premier’s records are exempt after it changed the law.
“In brief, the request is denied because it falls outside the scope of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act,” the letter, sent to Global News and the Information and Privacy Commissioner, read.
“In accordance with section 65(18) of the FIPPA, which provides that the FIPPA does not apply to records in the custody of a minister of the Crown or the minister’s office, the Request for entries, if they exist, fall outside the scope of the FIPPA. Cabinet Office will not be seeking to obtain any of the impugned records from the Premier.”
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Ford had passed legislation designed to overturn his legal loss.
“You don’t change the law to clamp down on transparency unless you have something to hide,” she said in a statement.
“It couldn’t be clearer that Doug Ford gutted Freedom of Information laws to cover up his tracks. The people of Ontario deserve to know what’s so bad that the Premier is ready to change the laws of the land to hide it.”
The government has made retroactive, sweeping changes to the freedom of information laws to update them and bring them in line with other jurisdictions.
Ford has acknowledged that the changes, at least partly, are motivated by court rulings on his cellphone.
“When it comes to a cabinet conversation within cabinet and on personal cellphones that should not be FOIable,” he said in May, before accusing assembled journalists of looking to publish deeply personal information.
“And I know you guys, you’ll pull out every single number and someone’s health records. You’ll do everything you can if you don’t see eye to eye with someone.”
The premier’s office did not offer a comment for this story, saying Ford’s previous comments stand.
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